


Moral Support

by easystreets



Category: It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia
Genre: Episode: Charlie Wants An Abortion, M/M, hand-holding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-23
Updated: 2020-08-23
Packaged: 2021-03-07 01:41:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,107
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26058895
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/easystreets/pseuds/easystreets
Summary: Dennis and Charlie aren't together. No, really: he's just there for moral support.
Relationships: Charlie Kelly/Dennis Reynolds
Comments: 6
Kudos: 33





	Moral Support

Charlie’s nervous jitter in his legs starts somewhere after they slam the bar’s doors shut and leave Dee to fend for herself amidst the crowd of ravenous 8am day drinking alcoholics and continues as they cross the street, Dennis tapping the WALK button impatiently as he waits for the traffic to thin out.

His hand meets his thigh and starts tapping out a rhythm, something from that stupid hooker-killing GTA game that Mac always brings out when they’ve got nothing better to do, and Dennis sighs and clicks his tongue along to the music because they’ve got a good half-hour of walking left--Stacy Corvelli’s dump is just off Center City--but he stops when Charlie’s breath starts catching itself in his chest and his wrists take on a Parkinson’s-esque tremor.

“Charlie, my man,” he says, stopping at a crosswalk, scuffing his Reeboks against the concrete. “Charlie, Charlie,” Dennis says to the wind, to the street signs. He likes the way Charlie’s cheeks take on a red colour when he sings or says something ridiculous, the way Charlie’s nervous hands stop clawing at themselves and hold steady in his pockets instead. So he does it a lot. “Charlie,” he sings, prompting him to say something. Dennis feels awkward and uncomfortable; sometimes it feels like Charlie’s speaking a language that Dennis barely comprehends.

“Bro,” Charlie breathes out, when the little man in the WALK sign turns white. “I don’t know what I’m going to say. I mean, I don’t wanna be a shitty dad or anything.”

Dennis hums quietly for a moment, trying to think of something nice to say. Something pathetic and hopeful, something Mac would loudly yell and fill everyone, for a splinter of a moment, with a strange sort of faith in the future. 

Instead, he says: “Kids are screwed up these days, man. Video games and all that shit, it rots their brains. Real zombies, I’m telling you.” He cringes but it’s too late and the words fall out of his mouth like loose change and Charlie frowns at the soles of his scuffed-up shoes.

“You think it’s-- he’s gonna be all weird? I mean, I don’t want kids picking on him and shit.” 

Dennis wants to say that it’s Charlie’s kid (if it really is, anyway, Stacy Corvelli was and probably is still a total whore) then it will be brilliantly, painfully weird, like Rain Man or that other famous and tortured genius guy, but better, because he’ll have Charlie’s shy smile and maybe possibly inherit the way he loves relentlessly and with abandon; take after his father’s olive green eyes and kohl eyelashes. 

But he can’t, because it’s Charlie and they’re walking to his baby momma’s at eight in the morning. And he wants Charlie to calm down, not freak out at Dennis for being weird or sappy or delusional. Which is how he gets whenever he really thinks about Charlie, which is why Dennis tries valiantly not to do it often. (It’s a surprisingly difficult task.)

Dennis grabs his hand and squeezes it tight so he can feel the pulse. This is something he can allow himself, under the guise of calming Charlie down or being a good friend. It isn’t a deluded fantasy. It’s simply a glimmer of hope: Charlie freezing, Charlie’s wrist bumping against his.

“Bro, I’m calming you down.” Charlie gives him a hesitant glance, but he doesn’t move his hand. “Relax, I do this with Mac all the time.” It’s a lie; Mac is good and needy in the way that Charlie isn’t, needy in a way that Dennis likes, but he isn’t Charlie. 

Charlie’s hand folds around his and the other goes deep into the trenches of his jean pockets, fiddling with the slip of paper that Dennis’d scrawled Stacy Corvelli’s address on. “It’s kinda working,” he admits.

“Good,” Dennis says. “I learned it in University.” He didn’t, but it’s a nice platitude and Charlie’ll never question it. It makes Dennis himself feel a lot better anyway. 

“Do you think I’ll be a good dad?” Charlie asks, after a moment of silence, aside from leaves crumbling under their footsteps. “Like, do you think I could raise a kid?”

“Yeah,” Dennis says, and it’s not even a lie. Sure, Charlie can be angry and bizarre and volatile, but he’d be a lot better than fucking Frank or Luther were to any of them, and he wouldn’t beat the kid, which is basically Parenting 101, yet puts him streets ahead of a good margin of parents. “I mean, it’d be hard and shit, but I’d help you out. We all would. It’d be like an adventure.”

“You would? I thought you said kids were screwed up these days.” Charlie’s swinging their hands together now, and Dennis allows himself to imagine a kid sandwiched between the two of them. 

“Well--” Dennis stutters. “Well, we could make it not screwed up. We could let it sleep in Mac’s room or something, because I’m sure as hell not giving up mine, and we could find Poppins so it would have a pet--”

“Great idea, and you know what, I took care of that dog for like a good ten years, the amount of shit I had to deal with… I can raise a kid!” Charlie says, and this might be the one case where raising a pet would be genuinely worse than taking care of a living breathing human being. 

They daydream the whole walk there, hands glued together, dreaming about raising this kid with a bunk-bed in Mac’s room and making it work in the bar for them and letting it drive the Range Rover in the Schuylkill if it wanted. They talk and bump into each other on a sidewalk that could easily fit three, and Dennis allows Charlie the last sip of his coffee.

The moment before they reach Stacy Corvelli’s stupid duplex, Dennis tosses his empty coffee in her rosebushes and places his hands on Charlie’s shoulders. 

“You got this, man,” he says, hugging him tight. “Let’s go raise this kid.”

“Thanks, Den,” Charlie says, his voice muffled. 

They stand bravely as Charlie rings the doorbell, and Dennis listens to the sound of the kid bitching about his XBOX as a woman in heels runs for the door.

Stacy opens the door in some Salvation Army tank-top, and before Dennis can even say something about how cheap of a whore she’s turned out to be or how women don’t age like fine wine at all, her mouth curves into a lip-glossed rictus and:

“You guys are together now?”

It’s ridiculous. Dennis is just there for moral support.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! As always: comments are welcome! Also I don't know if you guys noticed, but in season 1, both Charlie and Dennis wear the same maroon sweater and it's quite possibly one of the best things ever. 
> 
> (My dreamwidth is sometimessunny and it's basically like a better version of Tumblr. Say hi!)


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